Over the years we went to school together, we took road trips and vacations together, we worked together. Not all of those all at the same time, but we spent a lot of time in each other's lives. Bone was with me the night I met my ex-husband. She was maid of honor in our wedding. I'm still working at the law office job she found for me.
At some point, our lives diverged drastically. As she started to spiral out of control and away from the world we'd usually companionably shared, I started to go in the other direction, I got married, went back to school, bought a house and raised a dog. The split must have been hard for her in a way I couldn't understand. In her opinion, the direction I was headed was like an assault against her. It wasn't. How could it have been? What way she took her life was totally up to her and I would've been her conscience and cheerleader as I'd always been if she was looking to improve her lot in life. And, even though she sat 40 hours a week, about 10 feet from me, she took the path I'd least like to travel on some seriously rough roads, without anyone knowing just how much trouble she was in. Then, one day, she just stood up, and walked out the door. No goodbyes, no looking back, literally.
When it was obvious that I was the focus of her anger I let her slip away. When she was doing her worst, it was better for me. When she was doing better, I didn't think it was healthy for her. She identified me with the ways things went wrong for her.
For the last 10 years or so, she's been in and out of trouble, as well as in and out of her friends' lives. Until last week, when I got word that she was gone, forever. It didn't really matter how long we'd been estranged. Bone and her family had been part of my life for twice as long as they hadn't (if that makes any sense). I still can't wrap my mind around the fact that she's really gone. Despite the darkest parts of our history, I like the idea that she was still out there, and I really wanted things to get better for her.
On the most dismal day imaginable, unseasonably cold, gray and rainy I drove the hour plus to the shore to say a final goodbye to Boneman and pay my respects to her family. I can not possibly describe just how terribly sad the day was. I spent some time talking to her family and the couple of shore friends who were there. With each conversation, I pieced together the heartbreakingly sad tale of a life wasted. She was a woman in so much pain, she spent every day trying to find oblivion, all while trying to convince herself and every one she spoke to that she was doing better and going to pull herself out of the hole she'd wound up in. At that point, it didn't matter how she'd got there, whose fault it was that she'd fallen so far. All that mattered was that she couldn't see a way out and slowly, but surely she found one. Not with intention, though. She was just trying to escape the pain she was feeling right then, just as she'd been doing for months. She succeeded all too well. That was not the success I'd hoped she'd have.
No comments:
Post a Comment